Search results

It was more a joke about NAWAPA and building canals across the Alaska to Colorado. That and similar water-redirection schemes are the only reason to blast huge chunks out of the mountains.

Huh. Pretty nifty--almost like a segway.

They stuck an aluminum panel over the window, and presumably stuck a sealing material around the edges before repressurizing. If they didn’t plan to stay long, they don’t have to care about small leakage through an imperfect seal—not their air.

I don’t recall what it was called in the show, but IOTL there were a number of space telescopes at that time—the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory satellites. Smallish mirrors compared to Hubble (0.8 m to Hubble’s 2.4 m), but good for their time.

Consider Lenin, who, largely by sheer force of character, took a backward, war-torn peasant shithole and made it the wellspring of international communism. Fascism was largely a reaction to him. The isolation of Russia from the Entente was a consequence of him. I would go so far as to say...

We know that Pathfinder has a delta-v of up to 9 km/s, since it flies itself to Earth orbit from the back of a subsonic airplane. Going by NASA's trajectory browser website, and assuming refueling in Low Earth Orbit, Pathfinder is capable of flying to Mars in roughly 2 months. The return...

The overwhelming majority of Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, generally agree that Christ wasn't just God but also fully human--the doctrine of dyophysitism. As such, the Passion must be viewed as a willing person sacrificing themselves (or else it becomes somewhat meaningless in...

So, post-episode follow-up: All in all, a compelling episode, at least in some of its plots, and entertaining to watch. But I have some issues with the episode and season as a whole: All in all, I'll be back for season 3. It's one of the four shows per year I watch. But, if I were...

IIRC, the Scythian ritual sacrifice involved burying a horse and rider alive. Phoenecian/Carthaginian child sacrifice is also mentioned by Greek and Roman writers. EDIT: It's also a practice that tends to crop up in extreme cults long after being generally stamped out. I have read of one...

I'm not sure you could effectively Polonize millions of Germans. Look at the Russians' attempts at Russifying Poland--decades to a century and there was still a substantial Polish minority scattered across what was once the PLC. To Polonize the Germans, you would have to be even more...

There was still a Siamese expeditionary force to France in OTL WWI, though the war ended before they saw combat, IIRC. A functionally-independent Andean state (though realistically it would be vassalized by either Spain or the Dutch or English) could fill a similar role, particularly if it has...

What kind of economic reforms could Solidarity implement in the 1980s? IOTL, economic issues helped bring the Social Democrats to power in the second half of the 1990s—if there is similar economic strife, could the Polish United Workers’ Party actually win a fair election before 1989?

“Ok, sure, WE won’t bomb German cities.” [ships thousands of B-17s to the USSR] “But he will!” Ditto for Chiang, after a few thousand Chinese pilots are trained up.

Presumably there would be some revision or superceding of the Outer Space Treaty before such a point.

Under current space law (to my understanding), a base on the Moon would legally be a vessel, since no national body can claim land on the Moon. Secession is thus legally indistinguishable from mutiny or piracy.

Some US military units have unofficially used the CS battle flag, most notably planting it on Shuri Castle during WWII. Suppose you have a Navy/Marines/AF squadron take up the flag unofficially during the Vietnam War, and one of their aviators enters the astronaut corps. He, as a personal...

Another example of a new technology that helped advance modern (or at least, Newtonian) physics is gunpowder weaponry--if the Greeks or Romans had to worry about cannonballs, Aristotle might have come up with impetus theory himself.

[mumble mumble]...quantum entanglement...[mumble mumble]

Don’t forget that Mexico fights a bloody civil war in the 1930s, presumably worse than the OTL Mexican Revolution at the end of the Porfiriato. OTOH, a Mexico under the Catholic Hapsburg monarchy instead of the socialist-type government they had IOTL probably has a higher birth rate than IOTL...

Heck of a cliffhanger. Quick technical note: the C5 was considered as a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft IOTL, but the 747 was chosen instead because of aerodynamic reasons—when a Shuttle separates from the back of a 747, air currents passively separate the two aircraft. But wind tunnel tests showed...